Peanutato.

You know, I was just thinking to myself that Easter just blew on by this year.  I blinked and I practically missed it.  The air was crisp with a fine gas of sugar crystals glittering in the winds, coating the lands near and far with a sparkling sheen of sucrose.  Wee children delighted in gnashing marshmallow chickens with their needleish incisors.  Once mild mannered adults threw death blows to the hollow, waxy chocolate bunnies of their youth.  Blue and yellow sugar button eyes scattered and rolled under couches and stoves, safe from the salivating masses wanting to eat their once pleading glances.

No chance, choco bunny.  No chance.

Or maybe that was just my take on it.  I ate candy like it was my job this year.  Marshmallows, chocolate, peanut butter, oh my!  Nothing was safe from the black hole candy void known as my mouth during the Lenten season.  If it was sweet and Easter themed, I probably ate it.  Including, if you remember, those coconut easter eggs.

As I read into those coconut eggs, I found that the Pennsylvania Dutch had figured out that the unassuming potato worked excellently as a binder to make those coconut eggs.  I read anecdote after anecdote about people making these eggs with mothers and grandmothers every spring, each story more honeyed than the next.  It grew tiresome, but I like to cross check multiple sources.  And then it changed.   I read one recollection where it mentioned that the same basic potato fondant could also be modified to use peanut butter.

What! Peanut Butter Potato Eggs?  Could..  could this even be?  Indeed, it was.  Because I made them in a fit of Easter nostalgia.  Now you try.

Peanutato Eggs

Ingredients:

-3 ounces baked sweet potato, peeled

-3 ounces peanut butter (any variety you like, smooth or crunchy)

-3-5 ounces powdered sugar

-1 teaspoon vanilla

-Semi sweet chocolate (for dipping)

How to:

1. Mash up the baked sweet potato with a potato masher.

2. Add all ingredients except for the chocolate into a food processor.  Start with 3 ounces of powdered sugar, add more as needed later.

3. Pulse all ingredients to incorporate them.  Then puree them until smooth.

4. Add enough powdered sugar to get the dough to form a ball in the processor.

5. Line a cookie sheet with waxed paper and set up a double boiler.

6. Roll the dough into 1 inch balls and set them on the cookie sheet.  When the dough is gone, put it in the refrigerator.

7. Meanwhile, temper your chocolate.  In a double boiler over simmering water, heat the chocolate to 115 degrees while stirring it often.

8. When the chocolate reaches 115 degrees, turn off the heat.

9. Start quickly dipping each ball of dough to cover them,  Then return the candies to the waxed paper.

10.  Allow the chocolate to harden overnight before eating.